363 Days

It’s a bit too late, since I already made a promise to myself to finish my second novel. What can I say? I am a man of contradictions (not really [but sometimes]).

After sleeping off the New Year’s Eve hangover, I set up my laptop, surrounded myself with various caffeinated beverages, along with a few caffeinated needle injections to stave off a crash. I turned on some background music and began pounding out the next chapter. A few good ideas began to manifest themselves. But progress was slow. When I looked up from the screen, my cat was looking back, curled up in the corner of the room thinking to himself: ‘If I were bigger, I would eat you.’ I looked back at the screen. I’d written about a page. A page in three hours.

What was wrong? More caffeine? Maybe a change in background music? I put on Omnium Gatherum’s latest album. The growling vocals made me smile. I even banged my head a few times at the laptop. The cat stared at me with even more contempt. Still no words. Those bastards can be elusive. I sat back and turned up the music even more. Sometimes it’s better not to think for a bit.

Screw New Year’s resolutions. Who picks an arbitrary date to get shit done anyway? Oh that’s right, we do. I did. I madea resolution and now nothing’s happening. What the hell?

Maybe it’s because we are all going to die this year. In case you haven’t heard, a rogue planet (called Nibiru) will cut across our solar system at a right angle, throwing off the gravitational pull of the sun and knocking the Earth out of orbit, sending us hurtling into the void of space, our entire species frozen on a floating rock. So what‘s the point of writing? Unless… maybe we’ll be found by some advanced alien species. They’ll thaw out our lifeless planet and set us up in a new solar system. They’ll teach us quantum physics and share their advanced technology and tell us what the meaning of life is, and we’ll show them fried butter on a stick. A whole new beginning. Crap. I just wrote a science-fiction novel. A really bad one.

So, I turn up the grinding guitars and double-bass drums even louder (the cat has left the room by now, the pussy) and continue to pound away on the keyboard. Fuck words. I’ll drag them out by their entrails if I have to.

Back to work. Only 362 days left to finish my resolution. Make that 363. The leap year gives me an extra day!

I had to recalibrate my mind after rejecting the very faith (the very meaning of my existence) that exhorted my yearning to love and be loved as an abomination. I had to process the isolation and self-hatred of being a gay man in the military during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

I had to navigate depression, suicidal ideation, and a life void of purpose.

So I cultivated and nurtured my own purpose. I studied fiction and philosophy.

I merged the two into a novel. I lived and breathed and took witness through five characters, woven together into a single narrative.

The five characters are based on the five existential archetypes outlined in Simone du Beauvoir’s, The Ethics of Ambiguity.

The Nihilist
The Sub-human
The Adventurer
The Serious Man
The Passionate Man

I’ll leave you philosopher lovers out there to figure out which character belongs to which existential archetype.

Writing this book saved my life. It’s a pretty good read, too!

My First Novel: Remnants of Light

Just a guy trying to be creative before I’m kicked off this spinning spaceship suspended in a vast void.

Why photography?

We’re forever locked within a specific set of limited perceptions and spatial relationships. This vision we enjoy is defined by cells stacked in the eye. These cells only absorb and process a small portion of the entire spectrum of light.

We see so little of what is truly out there.

I try to use the camera to deviate from those familiar perceptions, to reframe those spatial spaces, to expose thin slices of time that change our relation to experiences teaming with unknowns, flashes of awe, and beauties unseen.